ditchparrot19
Member
The thread about the price of Lab puppies on the Main Forum got closed while I was away visiting family for Christmas, so I just wanted to offer up one example of backyard breeding gone haywire. And this one wasn't even profit-motivated.
About 20 years ago, a very good friend of mine bought a well-bred puppy from a highly reputable breeder of hunting Labs. He paid $600 or $700 back then and got way more than his money's worth as the dog turned out to be everything he could've hoped for.
When that dog was about 8, my buddy figured he'd just save a few bucks on his next dog by producing the next generation from that one and a beautiful, nearly white bitch owned by a guy in the same small town where we grew up. The female did not hunt, and nobody had any idea as to its lineage. It was a good-looking dog, and it was readily available.
The male he picked from that litter was a fine family dog and okay in the field, but only about half the hunter that its sire was.
Now, instead of stopping there, he breeds that dog (which he's not thrilled with in the first place) to a nice-looking bitch owned by his (my friend's) non-hunting brother. He takes a female from that litter. That dog doesn't hunt worth a tinker's damn, wants to fight every other female dog it encounters and has all kinds of health issues, including diabetes at age 4.
I just saw him on my recent trip. He's giving up the dog-breeding gig for good, but his experimentation has cost him dearly both in terms of money (which he originally thought he was going to save) and heartache.
On the flip side, just a half-hour down the road from where I live now is a nationally known kennel that's been producing hunting Labs for 40 years. His prices for puppies start at $1,200 and every single one is sold before it's ready to leave its mother's teets, and all are backed by a full guarantee of buyer satisfaction.
Excuse the car analogy, but these dogs are Cadillacs, Ferraris, BMWs or whatever. They're genetically engineered, on both sides of their family tree, to be precisely what my friend was looking for. A "lemon" may turn up now and again, but they're rare, and when it happens the breeder will buy the dog back.
If my buddy had bought his second and third dogs from that guy or someone like him, there's about a 99-percent probability that he'd have been happier and his bank account would've been fatter. He knows that now, but he paid a high price to learn it.
About 20 years ago, a very good friend of mine bought a well-bred puppy from a highly reputable breeder of hunting Labs. He paid $600 or $700 back then and got way more than his money's worth as the dog turned out to be everything he could've hoped for.
When that dog was about 8, my buddy figured he'd just save a few bucks on his next dog by producing the next generation from that one and a beautiful, nearly white bitch owned by a guy in the same small town where we grew up. The female did not hunt, and nobody had any idea as to its lineage. It was a good-looking dog, and it was readily available.
The male he picked from that litter was a fine family dog and okay in the field, but only about half the hunter that its sire was.
Now, instead of stopping there, he breeds that dog (which he's not thrilled with in the first place) to a nice-looking bitch owned by his (my friend's) non-hunting brother. He takes a female from that litter. That dog doesn't hunt worth a tinker's damn, wants to fight every other female dog it encounters and has all kinds of health issues, including diabetes at age 4.
I just saw him on my recent trip. He's giving up the dog-breeding gig for good, but his experimentation has cost him dearly both in terms of money (which he originally thought he was going to save) and heartache.
On the flip side, just a half-hour down the road from where I live now is a nationally known kennel that's been producing hunting Labs for 40 years. His prices for puppies start at $1,200 and every single one is sold before it's ready to leave its mother's teets, and all are backed by a full guarantee of buyer satisfaction.
Excuse the car analogy, but these dogs are Cadillacs, Ferraris, BMWs or whatever. They're genetically engineered, on both sides of their family tree, to be precisely what my friend was looking for. A "lemon" may turn up now and again, but they're rare, and when it happens the breeder will buy the dog back.
If my buddy had bought his second and third dogs from that guy or someone like him, there's about a 99-percent probability that he'd have been happier and his bank account would've been fatter. He knows that now, but he paid a high price to learn it.
